Hackers Threaten To Submit Artists' Data To AI Models If Art Site Doesn't Pay Up (404media.co) 32
An old school ransomware attack has a new twist: threatening to feed data to AI companies so it'll be added to LLM datasets. 404 Media reports: Artists&Clients is a website that connects independent artists with interested clients. Around August 30, a message appeared on Artists&Clients attributed to the ransomware group LunaLock. "We have breached the website Artists&Clients to steal and encrypt all its data," the message on the site said, according to screenshots taken before the site went down on Tuesday. "If you are a user of this website, you are urged to contact the owners and insist that they pay our ransom. If this ransom is not paid, we will release all data publicly on this Tor site, including source code and personal data of users. Additionally, we will submit all artwork to AI companies to be added to training datasets."
LunaLock promised to delete the stolen data and allow users to decrypt their files if the site's owner paid a $50,000 ransom. "Payment is accepted in either Bitcoin or Monero," the notice put on the site by the hackers said. The ransom note included a countdown timer that gave the site's owners several days to cough up the cash. "If you do not pay, all files will be leaked, including personal user data. This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws."
LunaLock promised to delete the stolen data and allow users to decrypt their files if the site's owner paid a $50,000 ransom. "Payment is accepted in either Bitcoin or Monero," the notice put on the site by the hackers said. The ransom note included a countdown timer that gave the site's owners several days to cough up the cash. "If you do not pay, all files will be leaked, including personal user data. This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws."
Birds of a feather flock together (Score:2)
CRYPTO IS FOR CRIME (Score:2)
Crypto should be killed because this technology is only used for crime. Bigly.
Re:Birds of a feather flock together (Score:4, Informative)
Do you really think any AI company accepts submissions? And do you think they would be really that stupid to train on a dataset that was publicly advertised to be submitted in retaliation?
Are we even sure the images were stolen or if it is completely made up? The last time I was threatened about recordings of my webcam I found that I do not have a webcam connected to my PC.
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100% this!
And then they add, "This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws."?!?!!? Is the hacker really threatening with ambiguous laws, while being the actual culprit violating bunches of laws? HA!
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As long as you think you won't be caught (and all criminals think they won't be caught), you can list all things that may happen to the company. GDPR or maybe DSA do contain certain duties to report security incidents, but the company will have the duty to report, no matter if they pay or not. Their only option is to deny they received the extortion, which can result in the fines getting much worse if the company is caught not reporting an incident when they would have to report it.
So, make AI companies accessories to crime? (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, we will submit all artwork to AI companies to be added to training datasets
I'm not sure making AI companies accessories to a crime is the bullet-proof win they think it is.
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The AI companies are obviously not accessories nor involved in the extortion. I believe their threat amounts to Packaging up the data and posting it to tor websites. It so happens to be known that specific AI companies such as Meta have been specifically downloading pirated media from such sites in order to train on it cost-efficiently: that is obtaining pirated copies of books so they don't have to pay for the book and pay the costs to obtain the books and possibly the costs to have them scanne
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It's actually giving AI companies what they wanted all along: free access to training data.
Information wants to be free (Score:2)
The world turned just fine before IP laws protected revenue streams as an act of coerced taxpayer charity.
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I believe the original time line was 18 years. I believe this is one of the most important ideas in the Constitution, as it seemed to have led to so much innovation, wealth, and prosperity.
And as you mention, it was subverted into ridiculous lengths of time and with far too much power being wielded (for example, allowing patents to get re-submitted with the most minimal and non-consequential changes as 'bran new' inventions), thanks to the rubber-stamping monkeys at the PTO.
Re:Information wants to be free (Score:5, Insightful)
You are confusing cause and effect.
The reason was to encourage inventors and artists to create more works for the benefit of the public. This encouragement was done by allowing them to profit exclusively from their creations for a limited period of time.
Nobody cared about "compensating artists fairly for their work"... other than as a carrot to encourage them to keep creating more work for our collective benefit.
It did work, and we did benefit greatly -until copyright was extended beyond reason to the point where it now encourages rent seeking on existing works instead of taking the risk of creating something new.
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The first term was 14 years, not 18, and today’s life-plus-70 extensions run completely against what the framers intended.
Many of the amendments do too.
12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 22nd, 23rd, etc.
They all change how things worked. Things the framers set up. Things that the framers intended.
However, at the same time, the framers did provide a way to change COTUS via amendments. So, arguably, the framers intended for people to make the country work in a fashion other than what the framers intended. The wisdom of making such changes is open to debate.
Since a "change mechanism" was clearly intended, and the framers c
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The first term was 14 years, not 18, and today’s life-plus-70 extensions run completely against what the framers intended.
Many of the amendments do too.
12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 19th, 22nd, 23rd, etc.
They all change how things worked. Things the framers set up. Things that the framers intended.
However, at the same time, the framers did provide a way to change COTUS via amendments. So, arguably, the framers intended for people to make the country work in a fashion other than what the framers intended. The wisdom of making such changes is open to debate.
Since a "change mechanism" was clearly intended, and the framers clearly understood that it could be used to make COTUS work in a way other than they intended, I don't think "run completely against what the framers intended" is a very strong or persuasive argument. Those men were wise enough to understand that they were not gods and that time would demonstrate they may have gotten a few things wrong. Maybe copyright is one of those things. Maybe they would agree that it should be 70 years plus the life of the copyright holder, or whatever.
I'm not arguing that the copyright situation isn't a problem (or that it IS a problem), only that the argument about running against intentions is not a good basis for addressing the issue.
Your point is valid; however, you've conflated two related but distinct concepts: Constitutional changes, e.g., amendments, and Statutory changes, e.g., laws and regulations. Constitutional changes have a rigidly defined process for approval and are expected to be difficult, time-consuming, and carefully considered before implementation. Statutory changes are much more flexible, although they are constrained by Constitutional limits. Copyright straddles these two concepts: it's an explicitly authorized Cons
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There is also a reason why they were updated so suit companies like Disney more than to suit you and me.
In other news (Score:3)
Artists who create physical art instead of pushing pixels suffer no impediment.
So? (Score:2)
Hackers also threaten me to upload my webcam videos. I don't have a webcam connected to my PC.
It's not like the AI companies have a "upload other people's images here" button somewhere. The hackers just thought about how to extort creators and found the moral panic about AI training.
404media is also clickbait and doesn't even understand the term LLM. If they would think about what the second L of LLM means, they would write about training language models with images.
Chefs kiss (Score:2)
This may cause you to be subject to fines and penalties under the GDPR and other laws.
Ha, that's just a beautiful last line.
Crypto the favorite currency of criminals, (Score:1)
terrorists, Presidents. Quick run out and buy some and sponsor some bad sh1t.